


Seeing Red

by Alice_in_Black



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Dark Brotherhood - Freeform, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3260624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alice_in_Black/pseuds/Alice_in_Black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cicero's suffered a lot through his life, in a lot of different ways. If he thought finding his family again in Skyrim would be an end to all that anger and despair, he was dead wrong.</p><p>Done as a collaboration with CSphire of Deviantart for The Bard's College's annual collaboration contest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CSphire](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=CSphire).



> This is the written half of a collaboration with the very talented [CSphire](http://csphire.deviantart.com/), who did the visual half. Please see take some time to admire [the artwork](http://csphire.deviantart.com/art/Seeing-Red-510519805) that she did to accompany this written piece~~

_Oh_ , that widening of the eyes, the dilation of the pupils, you can just _hear_ the blood pounding in their ears and their breath hitch and choke in their throat as they realized that their death was upon them. Their fear, their final moment of absolute terror, was truly sublime! All at once, they realized the futility of their efforts to survive just as their final breaths escaped through screaming lips and bubbles of blood!

But this time, Cicero could not bring himself to delight in the looming sense of doom in the air. For once, this moment of realized mortality did not feel victorious, or even remotely satisfying or _right_. No glory was to be had here, not for the Brotherhood, and _certainly_ not for Mother!

The slow boil to this point left a bitter taste in Cicero’s mouth. Long ago, Cicero traded his life away, gave it to the Night Mother in exchange for a purpose so much greater! He left his heart to beat in that cold iron coffin, a vessel for the dearest thing in the world. His world shifted to revolve entirely around Her... He let go of all other aspirations and desires and allowed himself to exist only as a hollow tomb in which he kept the Old Ways, the _right_ ways safely preserved. When all that wasn’t enough, he ceased to breathe—the Laughter took over from there.

In so many ways, too many ways, Cicero the Assassin was dead. Long dead. Killed as a sacrifice to Mother and the rest of her children. As honorable a demise as Cicero the Assassin could ever have desired.

So yes, Cicero the Keeper knew what it felt like to die, in a sense. He knew precisely what was happening when Astrid’s lips turned upward in a wicked smile and her words poured from her mouth in a measured, oh-so-carefully worded string of daggers, “But make no mistake. I am the leader of this Sanctuary. My word is law. Are we clear on that point?”

It meant so much more than what it sounded like. It filled his ears with spiders that crawled through his head and it was all the enraged Cicero could do to force a quivering smile back at her. Law? She knew nothing of the only laws that mattered! There were no tenets here among these heathens! The Old Ways were forgotten to them!

Cicero had given up his life for the Old Ways. He stood before them not a man, but a body for the Old Ways to possess and live on in! And now, she was killing him. Killing the tradition, killing the religion, killing the Brotherhood that he existed only to carry on!

His eyes widened. Breath hitched. His heart murmured, he was dying. The Brotherhood was dying.

The jester knew this game. The torture lasted as long as the killer—that _harlot_ — dared to draw it out. But it at least gave him a chance to fight. He would struggle, and in his death throes, he might just be able to make a difference. He owed it to Mother, and to all his dark brothers and sisters!

The thought was always creeping around the back of his mind like a barb of poison, ready to prick him and make him sick to his stomach any moment he considered just purifying the whole damn sanctuary. That thought held his temper in check. Barely. Until a new thought emerged.

He wasn’t alone! The old ways would not die, for a Listener at long last found the Night, and Mother would be heard! Yet even with hope comes the oppressive fear of failure. One more thing to keep Cicero awake at night, but it was so much better than the empty hopelessness of just waiting to die and fail his soul task.

“Cicero?” Babette didn’t like the way he leaned over her shoulder to watch her work. No one particularly seemed to enjoyed his company, but some tolerated him more than others. And while the Listener was out, Cicero’s choice of suitable company was significantly diminished. “Could you not get so close?”

“Hm?” Cicero hummed innocently. “Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes! Don’t let Cicero bother you, no! I’m just seeing what you’re up to. You always have such interesting tricks up your sleeve!”

Babette nodded slightly and set back to her potions. Across the room, Arnbjorn whispered something to Nazir. Such poor excuses for assassins when they barely even tried to hide their conversation or pointed glares! But Ciciero, ever the gentleman, ignored their hushed discussion and focused on the unchild.

Courteous and careful at best, that was how this family treated him. That is, if they didn’t sneer at him or ignore him entirely. Only the Listener thought to ask him questions. Only the Listener showed any amount of interest in Cicero or the Night Mother. It was so very little, but if only it could bloom from there. If only interest in the Old Ways could spread like a divine and cleansing plague!

The nights passed painfully slow, but he felt it building up like the tension in a bowstring drawn back over the course of every hour. In the belly of an old barrow, there was no knowing what time it ever was, or any way to be entirely sure of the passage of time here, but it felt like a single eternal night. Every time he woke, he wondered if Astrid would finally do it. Would she kill the brotherhood tonight? Dread consumed him, but the anticipation gripped his heart from inside his chest.

Like staring at the blade, just waiting to see it arc through the air…

Mother’s coffin cleaned, her body freshly oiled, and prayers to her obediently whispered from smirking lips, Cicero saw through another night’s worth of unholy rituals. Every step stirring no more dust than the scampering of a rat, his body casting a shadow dark as the new Secunda, he crept out of the chapel with a tune on his tongue. Rarely did Cicero venture so far from the safety of Mother’s sight, but he dared this night to dawdle among the others in the wide main cavern with his brothers and sisters. Perhaps, he mused to his own delight, the animosity had been of his own invention, the product of a grudge born against a leader who might, just might still come around.

“That shriveled corpse is not our mistress, I am! And to think that I’m supposed to answer to our newest recruit? It’s laughable, and I’ve had enough.”

Arnbjorn’s low, rumbling voice that sent tremors through the stone around him answered, “I’m behind you no matter what.”

“We all are,” hissed Veezara.

Ah, the irony of the words he heard! Their heinous, heretical words wormed into his ears and tore his last scrap of control to shreds! Something else was said, heresies drowned out by the rising laughter that resounded in Cicero’s mind. Quiet whispers under breaths and hums of agreement pierced him without even knowing the exact phrases on their sacrilegious lips, but just imagining the extent of their treachery made every one of Cicero’s muscles coil and his hands clench. Cicero felt the rage burn through him, flushing his sallow skin ruddy with the stain of blood pounding from within. What should have been a gasp instead became an inward cackle of laughter.

The dagger in his hand all but appeared there, like it had been placed by Sithis’s Wrath itself. He was wrath incarnate, responding to every tenet broken within this mass grave of all he held dear! They must not have seen him, in the shadows up on the ledge by the study; they must not have realized that their sins fell on the ears of one most devout. But surely they heard his laughter, or the sigh of metal on leather as his dagger found its home in his trembling hand. He could move silent as death in his old worn boots, but any stealth he may have boasted was lost to the ringing of laughter that now flowed from his lips like a stream of boiling water.

Laughter rang through the tomb, off the crumbling walls and the dirty pools of water, and Cicero swore that the shroud of the Void dropped across the room, making every flame and sound go dim.

He was off the ledge and in their midst before he could remember making any such decision. Not that he would ever regret disemboweling the pretender, but he realized a moment too late that he didn’t have a plan—any, at all, whatsoever. It took no great strategist to know to cut and stab, he reminded himself.

Plan enough for Cicero, such was his course of action. The knife in his hand shot for Astrid in a forward lunge that Cicero put his whole body into. His weight rolled forward into the blow.

No novice herself, Astrid sidestepped and drew her blade in one swift turn of her body, letting Cicero fall forward past her. The whole room exploded into motion at once as assassins fell back in confusion or rushed forward defensively. But Cicero was reeling back and spinning with his dagger out to draw an arc of death around himself. Once more he dove toward Astrid, and this time he waited until the start of her dodge to stab. She moved to her left, Cicero cut across to his right, into the path of her maneuver—

Scales beneath leather, his blade was stopped by the resistance of Argonian flesh. Veezara appeared in what had moments ago been empty space, his sword drawn and ready, but alas, the fool blocked with his belly!

The blood, not the blood of the bitch but the blood of a brother led astray hit Cicero with an unexpected jolt of guilt and confusion. Like a botched execution, Cicero recalled the only course of action he could take to preserve his own life: run for it. And he did, shocked at his own mistake. The disgust that Astrid still had the gall to go on breathing made bile rise in his throat, but the flood of emotions gave way the more his feet shuffled backward to the door and the now-infuriated brothers and sisters closed in around him. As his heel hit the first step, he broke free of the distractions, turned and ran for the exit of the caves. The soft soles of his feet slid against damp stone, and his mind screamed that Mother was still behind him. He was leaving her behind.

He was all that remained of the Brotherhood, as it was meant to be. Maybe Listener could understand. Maybe Listener could protect Mother and preserve the Old Ways. But he could not allow himself to die! He could not let the _true_ Dark Brotherhood die, and even if he was all that was left, he could regroup, plot, and strike again! But he would not let the Night Mother down! When the black door of the sanctuary screeched on ancient hinges, he heard the screams of every fallen brother and sister who only lived on his memory. And as he barreled into the forest, Cicero felt his pursuer without seeing him. He ran through the night, into the daylight, and knew that to dally was to be a still target just asking for death.

Mother deserved better than this. The Brotherhood deserved so much better! He cursed Astrid with every step, every stumble, every labored gasp for breath, and every nervous glance over his shoulder.

They could not die like this. The once-proud, once-mighty Dark Brotherhood could not die like this.

By the time he made it to the Pale, he could scarcely walk. Shaking legs climbed the small hill of heather and weeds to an old, dilapidated farmhouse. How many months had it gone uncared for? The bodies within it had almost been completely picked clean by the skeevers so that the bones rested white as snow on the floor. He could not stay long. The assassins on his heels were only a few hours behind, so he had to make this stop count. Old clothes made for adequate bandages to cover Cicero’s blistered feet, and a few jars of something pickled would sate his hunger. Sleep was a luxury he would not torment himself to think of, and before he could be tempted by the bed of rotting straw in the corner, he set back out into the first rays of dawn.

Tundra gave way to snow, and then to craggy towers of stone and ice. Cicero did not slow for a second. He might have been caught at the crossroads to Windhelm, had he not taken possession of a courier’s horse for that last stretch through the snow to the city. Not until he caught sight of the sea, the beautiful sea with all her infinite mysteries, did he at last tumble to a stop and fell to his knees before the frost-covered metal of a coal-black door.

“What is life’s greatest illusion?” it asked, and its voice echoed through the entire empty complex below. It was just a massive sarcophagus now, no longer a home, cradling the bodies of dead brothers deep beneath the snow. Would they still be at peace in the Void if he failed? Would Mother die in some greater capacity if he fell? He imagined, for a moment, what eternal torture he would endure in the Void for letting the entire Dark brotherhood down? Could any torment match his own anguish at seeing everything he lived for, everything he believed in, extinguished in the same killing blow that ended him?

Fear gripped him in a way he’d never known before. Ice in his veins. His eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat like a sob.

The sound of footsteps in the snow behind him drowned out his hushed voice. He whispered urgently against the door, “Innocence, m—“


End file.
